Volume Sports Photography

Lesson 18 of 39

Team Photo Posing

Volume Sports Photography

Lesson 18 of 39

Team Photo Posing

Lesson Info

Team Photo Posing

Let's talk about team photos, teaming posing. This is a really really simple concept, but again a lot of people just don't do the work on it. So you need to understand your windows, you need to understand how many rows your gonna have, and how your gonna position the kids. Okay, it's just like choir, band, get in your windows. Everyone remembers eighth grade, come on, we were there. So we line them up tallest to smallest. One of the biggest things I see wrong with this, is people get 30 kids. Shortest kid is five foot, tallest kid's six foot. And so what do they do, they do in and go, okay, one, two , three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, all the way up. And they just go smallest on one end and they go over to the end of the row. Then they go this way, then they go this way. Do you guys remember singular wireless, those bar commercials? It looks ridiculous. It looks dumb. So what we do is we take the smallest kid, that's the middle. Then we build it...

out. Then we do the net row. We build it out. Then I take the last row, I bring the tallest kid in, we build it out. I don't want there this to be my image, I want this to be my image. Okay. Simple stuff like that, that a lot of people just don't think about, make huge differences in your quality of your final image. One more thing. This is in the bonus content. Literally, the easiest thing in the world, if you grab a hand full of pennies and a glass of red wine, you could make your own. We make guides on how it goes. How many people is it? Eight. My first row is three, my second row is two, my third row is three. 40, 13,14,13. Oh, it's 39? 12,13,14. What that means is that I literally have to put no thought, in how many people go where. None. We talked about how it's important that that person who's letting the people in, that we know that number. We talked about how critical that is. That's because as their walking that team over there, there gonna go 10, three, four, three, okay. They start setting it up. And what happens is me, as the owner of this business, I am guaranteed that all of my pictures are going to look the same. I don't have anyone winging it. And I've seen other people out there, I've seen other people that use contract workers, and they are very, very, very, very vague in it, so you'll see where it's like two rows. One rows kneeling, one rows standing, and you'll see weird windows. And it's not always perfect cause sometimes you'll have people that jump in and jump out, but this is how we do it. And this is why. It makes it simple. Our teams, this would have been a borderline one, close enough where we could have had the coach's drop a knee. Okay? But everybody is in a window. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's setup that way. Front row, criss cross apple sauce, second row on your knees, off your butt, third row standing, hands behind your back. We get every row uncomfortably close to the other row. Okay, and we walk these people in to the gaps between them. Criss cross applesauce in the front row, the only exceptions to that would be hockey, where you can't do criss cross applesauce in hockey pads, it just doesn't work. So in hockey we do benches, so we do sitting on a bench, standing behind the bench, standing on the bench. That's how we get our three rows. But still the same principles. Hands on your knees, hands behind your back. That's how we do it. Everyone does the same thing. If we are photographing tennis or lacrosse, those have skirts for girls, so they do not go criss cross applesauce. They will go kneeling on their butts to their heels. And if it's gymnastics or swimming, then we will sit like a mermaid. Like that. Otherwise, everyone gets the same pose. That's how we do our teams. Okay? We go in. We got basic posing. Basic posing. Now for our big, big, big groups, for this stuff, one of the things you have to be aware of, is not only just your aperture, but this is obviously more than three rows. Okay? If your going to go with football, we always do it as, we figure out we want nine rows. It's a hard thing to figure out as you look at your prints, because if you go too long, you'll get this weird panoramic shot, with a ton of wasted space on the top and the bottom. Okay? If you go too tall, what happens is that back row kid is so far away, that the head is tiny. So there's always this sweet spot. So for this job, what we would do, is we would say, okay we want, we got 80 kids, we got 90 kids, we wanna do 10 rows. We would just go 10, 9, 10, 9, 10 9, until we get to the back row and there's were we would just finish it. Consistent, easy way to do that. Make sense?
Lens, focal length choice on something like this?
Okay, okay, so I'm terribly afraid of heights. So we'll talk about that first, I forgot to talk about that. I get so terrified because they want me to climb up on a ladder, and I think they're crazy when they ask me to climb up on a later, cause I'm not doing that. I stand on the band conductor stand, the little perch thing, I stand on that, and that's as tall as I'll go. And we shoot with that. That's still the Einstein light's, be bare bulb it, we do two reflectors on it, cause it's so far back. We shoot that with full power two lights. The lens is a 24 to 70 at F13 or smaller. Smaller aperture, bigger number.
At 70, or ...?
Oh no, no, no, whatever, I don't know. 35, 40, I don't go super wide cause we want to avoid distortion, and I'm not that far, I'm not way far back on it, but I'm also not right there. So, I don't know, I can look up for you what that focal length was. You wanna be aware of not going as wide as your lens will go, cause that can add too edit distortion. And effects like that, but yeah we don't.
I was just wondering if there was any kind of, like, in theory, that if you were to do a longer focal length, to not have tinier heads in the back, or if there's anything ....
You could get into that, like, it's yes, I don't know if it's going to make as big of a difference that your trying to do it. And the biggest thing with this is trying to keep the attention of a hundred 16 and 17 year old boys, from across the field, (laughing) is an issue, but I address making faces to them, and I have someone else at these big ones watching. Like that's your job. And so all their doing is looking for someone, kids all think this ones funny. They all go. And they point and look up in the sky. I don't get it. Or you'll have people that just try to make goofy faces, and like, okay, I was 17, it was fun. But these kids do it in every single picture, and then they always end up being the kids that don't even order them, so they're ruining them for families that wanna keep these memories. So I just say, and I will have issues still, I get up and say, "Hey guys, listen we're gonna take a team photo. Bring your legs together, bring your butt up to the front edge of the seat, sit up tall, get in your window exactly where I want you to be. Alright, we're gonna look right here. Click, click, click And I'll be looking, and generally where you'll see it, how you'll see it, is not the kid doing the problem, you'll see the reaction around him, from the people laughing and looking, and then I will say, if I have someone doing something, I just put my camera down and say, "Alright guys, listen up, this might not be an important photograph to you, but parents are spending a lot of money for these, and it's important that we get a good picture. So, I understand that you think it's cute that your making faces, and your being funny, and I'm not gonna call anyone out, but if I have to call you out, your out of the picture. This is your warning, look at the camera, smile." And I'll pull them out. I'll say get out of the picture. If you don't want to be in the picture, don't be in the picture, but don't ruin it for everyone else who does. And so, those are things that really, that get under my skin. I hate that. So we'll pull them out. Generally what happens is, that we'll always extend grace on it, so what will happen is I'll say, "If I see you doing it again, I'll pulling you out of the picture." And if I take a picture and I see a kid doing it again, I say, " Your out. Your out. Get out." And at that point the kid will go, " I'll be good." And I will take them. I don't want to kick the kid out. I don't want to have a conversation with the athletic director about why he's not in the photo. I don't wanna have a conversation with that kids mom about why her kid was acting like an idiot. I just don't wanna do that. So if I can have them in the picture, and have them acting right, Good! Great! Maybe they'll spend some money. But I also have no tolerance for allowing them, cause that stuff trickles down into all your sports at all the schools kids are gonna be messing around. So for our bands and choirs, our posing for these is a little bit different. As a result of our sports contracts, we do band and choir days, and club days. We have to do it. Band and choir days we actually do make a little money off of, not a ton, but we do sell. I'll make like 6, 7, 800 bucks a day. Not big money but your there all day. That's better than nothing. In those situations, we will allow the teachers to pose the group the way they want to. So they have a layout, a thought process, of how they want it done. So in those situations, that's one of the few times, we will let the client tell us how they want it posed, otherwise we always take control of that situation. The only times that we would get, the only request we get, like, when coach's want to get into that, cause they almost all don't care, but it might be dance line or something like that. That would be the only weird, weird, weird one.

Class Description

Add thousands of dollars in income to your existing photography business by adding team sports photography. Matthew ‘the Body’ Kemmetmueller runs a profitable volume business and is passionate about sharing his knowledge of the industry secrets with other photographers who want to start a business in this lucrative segment of the photo world.

In this class, Matthew will give you all of the information that you’ll need to start or expand your volume sports photography business. You’ll learn:

How to bid on contracts and what your pricing structure should be

The best workflow for photographing numerous teams in one day

The fastest ways to process orders and keep them organized

Lighting and posing for teams and individuals

How to use Photoshop to create banners and posters

By the end of this class, you’ll feel confident about entering the profitable volume sports photography business.

a Creativelive Student

Fantastic class! Matthew is not only a great teacher who easily gets his ideas and thoughts across but he's fun, funny and engaging. I keep coming back to watch again, and again.

Brian T

I've watched Matthew before, on Creative Live, and in person. He never fails to entertain and his knowledge is great. This class on high volume sports photography is the best one I've watched. I'm trying to break into this are of business, and he does a great job of breaking down each area. He is a great public speaker, and does a great job explaining what I need to know.

Isaiah Salazar

I cannot full express my gratitude for this class. I have done T & I work before but just little aspects of it have evaded me.this class so far has been extremely helpful and it isn't even over yet. Thank you for not just being open, but being kind. Making it a point to say to "Play by the rules" and to emphasize "Run an ethical business" is refreshing. Don't Be Valdemort! ha ha.